Historic Landmark Church — Uptown Denver

This property is a late-1800s stone church in Uptown Denver that was adaptively reused into roughly ten residential lofts — the kind of building every Denver neighborhood has one of and every historic-preservation commission watches closely. It sits on the City of Denver's historic landmark register, which means every exterior change, including a full re-roof, gets reviewed. When hail totaled the roof, the owners called us.

What we got called to replace was not a standard residential roof. It was 200 squares of predominantly 13/12-pitched slope (about 47 degrees from horizontal — nearly twice the steepness of a typical Colorado residential roof), wrapped around a multi-gable geometry with a central stone spire that climbs several stories above the main roof line. And punched through that slope were approximately 50 skylights, placed there to bring daylight down into the loft conversions below. Every one of them had to come off and go back on new.

The Spire Was the Problem

The central spire on this historic landmark is what makes the building iconic on its corner of Uptown. It is also what made this project difficult. There was no way to work the spire safely from ladder tie-offs or rope-and-harness work alone — the geometry, the height, and the historic-stone elevation below it all ruled that out. We scaffolded the entire building, tower and all, and worked the spire from a full platform with the crew tied off to purpose-built anchors inside the scaffold system.

Full-building scaffolding on an urban historic landmark is not a small line item. It requires engineering, permit coordination with the City of Denver, sidewalk closures on the adjacent public walks, pedestrian protection structures where scaffolding crossed foot traffic, and daily inspection documentation for the life of the project. It also ate a meaningful portion of the total project timeline just to stand up and tear down.

13/12 Pitch — Not a Walkable Roof

A predominant 13/12 pitch is beyond what most crews will get up on without specialized fall protection and pace adjustments. At that angle, shingle bundles don't stage on the slope — they have to be handed up through scaffold levels. Every worker up there is in full harness, tied to roof anchors we installed specifically for the project and removed at closeout. Install pace on steep slope runs roughly half of what a flatter roof allows, and crew rotation has to happen more frequently to keep fatigue from becoming a safety issue. Five weeks of install on 200 squares at 13/12 with 50 skylight openings is aggressive; it is not fast compared to a walkable roof.

Full Re-Deck

When we opened up the existing roof, the decking underneath was the original skip-sheathed boards from the building's 19th-century construction — not suitable for modern asphalt shingle installation, not meeting current code-minimum fastening requirements, and showing the signs of more than a century of weather cycling. We re-decked the entire roof with solid structural sheathing, nailed to the existing rafter system per current IBC requirements, before any underlayment or ice-and-water went down.

Re-decking a 200-square historic roof is a commercial-scale framing operation by itself. On this project, it added days of scope and had to be scheduled around weather windows that gave us enough consecutive dry time to strip, re-deck, and dry in before the next front moved through the Front Range.

~50 Skylights

A loft conversion in a former church volume tends to get its daylight from above. This adaptive-reuse conversion reflects that: roughly 50 skylight openings punched through the roof to light the ten residential units below. Every one had to come off, the opening re-flashed with ice-and-water shield into the new deck, and a new curb-mounted unit installed and sealed.

At a dozen skylight replacements per day on the ground, 50 skylights would already be a meaningful parallel scope. Compressed inside the roof install, on 13/12 slope, we ran skylight swaps as a parallel workstream with dedicated crew handling only that scope so the shingle pace wasn't constantly interrupted.

Shingle Spec: OC Duration in Driftwood

The Denver Landmark review let us install a standard architectural laminate shingle in an approved color that honored the building's character without requiring a specialty slate or tile profile. We specified Owens Corning TruDefinition Duration in Driftwood — a dimensional laminate with SureNail reinforced nailing strip that handles steep slope and high-frequency penetrations (the skylights) without the nail placement becoming an issue. Driftwood reads as a soft charcoal-and-brown blend against the red sandstone elevation of the church itself, which is what the landmark review was looking for.

Five Weeks, Hail Claim, Closeout

From mobilization through scaffold teardown, this project ran about five weeks. The project was funded by a hail insurance claim with supplement work documented for the carrier covering the full re-deck, the skylight count, the scaffold line item, and the code-upgrade work required on an adaptive-reuse historic building under Denver's current IBC amendments. Closeout included the manufacturer warranty, our workmanship warranty, per-building scaffold inspection records for the owner's files, and final walkthrough with the property management company.